It is time for another challenge at Bitten by the Bug 2.  Under the Sea is the theme which can be fun with the Cricut and I came up with a shaker card.

With the stress of starting a new job some of my mojo has left me, but I was going through my Pinterest card board and saw alcohol ink techniques which are always fun.  I always think blending blue alcohol inks looks like underwater so that started my inspiration.  Life is a Beach is a really fun Cricut cartridge for ocean/beach theme items.  I found a seahorse card and decided to make it into a shaker card.  

To start I colored a couple of Ranger gloss paper with various inks that I thought would look good for both the ocean as well as the sea horse, fish and seaweed.  This is how they looked when done.  You can see how big the images you want to cut out are and make sure your colored area is that big and add some to make sure.

After making these, I decided to cut the front out first so that I could try and color the seahorse and seaweed as well as the border.  I also cut out those items to place over the shapes in case the coloring didn’t work out as is sometimes the way with alcohol inks.  In the end they looked great, so I only used a couple of cutouts (the fish and some seaweed) to put on the back part of the shaker which was cut out of the blue background above.  I love how images cut out of these types of alcohol backgrounds turn out and they are never the same. In order to make the base card a shaker, I sliced off half of the card so that the front cut out as a square.  I added a border of sea fans to the bottom of the card cut from the brown portion of the sheet.

Here is the card with the sequins showing when you shake it.

Adding in the images I had cut out made the front too busy but I did like the way they turned out, so I added them to the inside of the card.  I wrapped the tail around the seaweed before gluing it on.

There isn’t a sentiment inside because I haven’t decided how I will use it.  It is always great to have some blank cards on hand that you can use for various occasions. In the end, it was fun to play with alcohol inks again.  Make your own Under the Sea fun with the Cricut and link it over at Bitten by the Bug 2 by August 29.  There are some really great projects by the design team to give you some inspiration. – Denise

This challenge by Bitten by the Bug 2 is all about the Great Outdoors.  It is ironic because I ran out of time to complete this challenge before we headed up to our cabin in the U.P. of Michigan for vacation.  So I took some supplies with me and completed it there.

A few years ago at the Mega Meet in Novi Michigan, I purchased this chip board album from Clear Scraps.  The front is a vest shape with a few cut outs and the rest of the pages are solid.  Gluing a solid piece of paper over the entire front (covering up the slits and holes representing buttons) gave me a clean slate make a fishing vest out of it.  I trimmed closely around it and then used a piece of sandpaper to clean up the edges.  Distress Ink was blended all around the edges and the pockets. The pockets were done by using a pocket cut from Make-up Bag box card from SVG Cuts and resizing them to be both big and little.  Plain rectangles were cut the same width as the pockets and guessing on the height.  The lures and bobbers came from Cricut’s Outdoor Man and the Tacklebox Box Card from SVG Cuts.  The back of the vest is actually the second page of the album that shows through. That paper is from an Echo Park collection called The Great Outdoors.  Cutting out the pieces at home and taking them with me, worked out well and you can see our own lake peeking out in the back.  I did forget the rings to attach the album together, but will do it at home.

I also cut out a tissue box cover from the same paper collection and decorated it with panels to leave at the cabin.  I have made several of these from SVG Cuts. You can see my view while crafting in this picture.

Make sure to link your great outdoor project using your Cricut over at Bitten by the Bug 2 by August 15.  You can get some great inspiration by all the designers there. Now off to go hiking. – Denise

Another new challenge over at Bitten by the Bug 2 is to use some sort of material that would otherwise be thrown out in a project or use a recycle theme.  I am hosting for this challenge.

I hate waste and while I recycle, I also love to reuse what would be thrown away to make new useful items.  I recently started a new job after the company I was with for 34 years closed.  It has been an adjustment and I thought that some pretty new things for my desk would be a great pick-me-up. 

I started with a Triscuit box and a Jiffy Corn Bread mix box and came up with this great place for my sticky notes, scrap paper, and paper clips.

I was originally going to use an svg file for desk accessories and cut them from cereal boxes, but I discovered there really aren’t a lot of those files, or at least ones I liked, so I decided to just look for boxes about the size I wanted and use my Cricut to cut out some decorations. The Jiffy box was just right for the Post-It Notes.  Opening the ends of the boxes allowed me to cut the boxes to the height I wanted on my paper cutter.

This was after cutting the Jiffy box, but before cutting the Triscuit box to the right size.  I then taped the bottoms back.

After finally deciding that flowers and bees would be a nice theme, and something different than flowers and butterflies, I found this perfect honeycomb pattern as part of Teresa Collins Basics and this cute bee from Small Talk Frames & Tags.  I made the honeycomb image the width of the Jiffy boxes glued together.  I then used a rectangle the same width and the height of the cut boxes to slice out what I needed of the square honeycomb shape.  I then made a frame out of two rectangles sliced out and welded it to the sliced honeycomb.  I repeated for the size I needed for the sides of the smaller box.  The bees were made from a gold velum and black vinyl.  The velum really shows up so much better in person and I was able to bend up the wings for some dimension.  Wrapping the boxes in a lighter gold before gluing on the honeycomb cut out was easy.  I used a pattern paper from an Echo Park collection called Spring Market to wrap the larger Triscuit box and then glued the the Jiffy boxes to the front.  I did have to put a separate sheet of people on the back of the box since a 12 x 12 wouldn’t go all the way around. 

Classic use of tin cans as pencil holders the followed using a soup can and a chicken breast meat can wrapped in the same paper.  I added another bee to the taller can, to tie them together.  The tag on the shorter can covers up the fact that 12 inch paper didn’t go clear around the can. 

I finished off with a tissue cover using another pattern from the collection.  SVG Cuts has this on their website and I have used it several times.  While this last piece didn’t technically reuse anything, I did use up some of my vast collection of paper, so that counts, right? 

Have fun and put your own recycled or up-cycled project in the links at Bitten by the Bug 2 by August 1. – Denise

For the next two weeks Bitten by the Bug 2 is collaborating with Double Trouble to do a challenge called Oh Baby.  This mood board is our inspiration.

I decided to do an older, but classic technique called a waterfall card. The blocks on the image were my inspiration.

The real fun comes with the action when you pull the tab.

Sorry the video is sideways, but I was having trouble uploading it, so this is the best I could do.

In the past I had just done the mechanism portion by hand, but decided it would be a good idea to have it as a project on Design Space so that I could make them quickly if needed in the future.  Using basic shapes and score lines, it was pretty quick to do.  The blocks that flip were made using a square frame from the Going Places.  I made the frame and also a duplicate with the center contour taken out to make the back of the block from the patterned paper.  Kate’s ABC’s were used for the letters and I attached each of them in the middle of the frame.  Originally I did that to save paper, but was then later able to use the negative cut in a bonus card. The patterned paper was from a really old stack I had by DCWV called Baby Girl.  The size of the stack is 4 1/2 x 6 1/2 which makes it great for cards.  The button brads were attached to the background paper before the whole thing was glued to the card base.

Here is the bonus card using the negative cuts.

Be sure to visit Bitten by the Bug 2 to add your own project for this challenge.  Since we are collaborating with Double Trouble, we are not requiring you use the Cricut, but you do have to use a die cut in your project.  Have fun – Denise

For the next two weeks Bitten by the Bug 2 will have a masculine theme.  I made these favors to hand out to the fathers in our church (and the other church that shares our building) on Father’s Day.

Since I was making 20 of them, I needed something fairly easy, but also something that they could use.  I happened to need a keychain flashlight to replace mine that had broken and came across these on Amazon.  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07SGDLD3J/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I thought they would make a nice useful present for the men.  Searching Pinterest, I came across the sentiment and it clicked that I could use the key chain somehow with a lighthouse.  I searched Design Space and the lighthouse from the Life is a Beach cartridge.  It seemed perfect.  I sized it to be 5 1/2 ” tall and to fill in the white stripes (which were just open in the original cut) I took the yellow layer, made a duplicate, changed the color and hid most of the contours so that it looked like this.

By putting the solid image behind the main one and grouping them, I was able to flatten the image with solid stripes.  Flattening the image and making a print, then cut saved a lot of time when putting them together.  The poem was done on Word and printed on my printer.  Distress Ink was applied around the edges.  The lighthouse was glued in place and my Crop-a-dile was used to punch a hole in the open space of the lighthouse top.  Washi tape held the keychain in place and allowed it to be squeezed to let the light shine.

It really looks great when lighting it up.

Here is the back with the keychain flashlight taped in place.

Make sure to add your own masculine project using your Cricut and link it up at Bitten by the Bug 2 by July 4. – Denise

The challenge at Bitten by the Bug 2 for the next two weeks is Country Fair.  I am in the midst of getting projects done for my daughter’s wedding, which is less than two weeks away and I am only four days away from flying out to her house in Washington state. Yikes!

However I was able to get a quick card done for a couple of great-nieces who show goats at the fair.  

The goat is from Nate’s ABC’s.  It is two layers and I colored the nose, hooves, and eye with a black marker.  The sentiment is the font is Signature Script Fonts with the “fair” coming from Country Fair.  A good way to add to a simple card is to emboss the background.  I used the Cuttlebug embossing folder called Bandana with white cardstock and then used a blending brush with Distress Oxide ink over the whole thing.  Another way to make things go a little quicker was to use an adhesive backed cardstock from DCWV for the letters.  

Get your own inspiration for a country fair theme by going to Bitten by the Bug 2 and seeing what the other projects the the designers came up with.  Then go ahead and link up your own project using your Cricut by June 20th.  – Denise

The challenge for the next two weeks at BItten by the Bug 2 https://heather-bittenbythebug2.blogspot.com/2021/05/may-flowers.html is called May Flowers. While my project does not have flowers as the main emphasis, it does incorporate them.

My daughter’s wedding is in June and I am busy making various projects for it. She lives in Washington State and is getting married there, so her tables are going with various themes of the area. One of the tables is going to be done in the theme of the rainforest. I thought a couple of mushroom fairy houses would be a whimsical addition to it. The design is from Dreaming Tree and can be found at this link. https://3dsvg.com/shop/luminaries/marigolds-and-mushrooms-svg-bundle/ The original design has a lot more frills and is over 10 inches high. I wanted them to blend in a little more on the table so after downloading the files into Design Space, I sized everything at once by selecting all and in the edit mode made one of the dimensions about half of the original (and making sure the little lock between the h and w shows as locked). That keeps everything in proportion. The hide contour feature let me take away some of the details that made it a little too cutesy for me. I had some cardstock with these raised dots that made a perfect top. The flowered paper is from a Simple Stories collection called Cabin Fever. The rest is from my stash including gold velum and the little pieces come from scraps. I used Distress Oxide inks around the edges. The smaller size makes it a little harder to put together, but still doable.

Here is the other mushroom fairy house from the set made in the same manner as above and pictured together.

The neat thing about these is that they lift off their bases so that you can put a battery operated tea light inside. Here they are lit up.

Make your own project incorporating flowers and using your Cricut, then link them at Bitten By the Bug 2 found here https://3dsvg.com/shop/luminaries/marigolds-and-mushrooms-svg-bundle/ by June 6. More wedding projects posted after the wedding including a really big macrame project. – Denise

A new challenge is up on Bitten by the Bug 2 just in time for graduations.  It is that season and there are all kinds of graduations from kindergarten to college and beyond.  My son is in the Air Force and was selected to go into the Air Force Weapons School.  He will graduate this June and I wanted to make a card for him.

I looked it up on the internet and found the patch that they will wear after graduation on their uniforms.  I downloaded the image and uploaded it to Design Space as print, then cut.  I have been doing this more because It certainly is easier with some designs that are unique and harder to find.  After I sized it to be about 5 inches tall, I used the new offset feature to make a shadow of the image that was about a 1/4 inch.  I then duplicated that shadow and flipped it.  Bringing the two tops together and welding them made a great card base.  It is helpful to use the center alignment tool to make sure they are centered with each other before welding.  Adding a score line in the middle made it easy to fold (once again using the center alignment).  One thing I didn’t realize until I went to cut, is that because I had used the offset feature using a print, then cut, it made the new solid offset image print, then cut too.  I changed it to cut and used a red cardstock to cut the base.  On the inside I used another downloaded image for the school logo as  print, then cut and put that inside.  The sentiment is from a Close to my Heart stamp.

If you have a graduation project using your Cricut, make sure to link it up by May 23 at Bitten by the Bug 2.  Check out what the design team has done if you need some inspiration. – Densie

A Star Wars challenge is up on Bitten by the Bug 2 in honor of May 4 (May the fourth be with you).  I chose to do a birthday card for my husband as he and the kids used to watch the Star Wars movies on videos (and later DVDs) together all the time.

This year my special family birthday cards are wiper cards.  You can find ways to do them online and Lori Whitlock has some cute ones too.  In the end, I made my own using basic shapes and score lines.  I downloaded a font from DaFont.com called Star Jedi and used it to make the front of the card which was cut out of yellow vinyl and black vinyl.  I did use the new offset feature on Design Space to do the “you” on the front.  After making an offset of the original word, I sliced the two which created this nice outline.  I downloaded an image of this old Yoda from the internet and used the print, then cut feature.  I tried to find an image on Design Space, but they all seem to be the new baby Yoda, which didn’t work with the message I wanted to make about being old. It is attached to a strip of acetate so that it pops up as you open the card.  The papers came from a Paper House pad called Hunting Paper and Park Lane’s Celestial.

Here is the wiper card in action.

Make your own Star Wars (or any project with stars) on your Circut and link it on the Bitten by the Bug 2 by May 9th.  The designers really have some cute projects there, so check it out.  May the Force be with you. – Denise

The challenge over at Bitten by the Bug 2 for the next two weeks is Fairy Tales.  I was in a different kind of mood when I thought about this challenge and did a more grown-up take on the challenge.

Last year my niece had me do several wine glasses for her and her friends with different punny sayings relating to different Disney characters.  I didn’t have pictures of those glasses, but decided it would make a fun tag for a bottle of wine (or other spirits).  This fairy godmother is from Disney – Princess Happily Ever After.  I flattened the image which makes the image into a print, then cut and is really helpful for these detailed images.  The tag itself was easy to make from basic shapes – a rectangle 2 1/2 inches x 8 inches with a score line 2 1/4 inches from the top and a 1 3/8 inch circle centered in the top.  The font is from DaFont and called Waltograph.  A few solid sequins and it was done.  Quick and easy. Now that song will be running through your head, lol.

Make sure to join us at Bitten by the Bug 2 to see what other great projects the designers have and link up your own Fairy Tale project using your Cricut.    – Denise